


Baby Steps

by lymricks



Category: Justified
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-06
Updated: 2013-03-06
Packaged: 2017-12-04 11:49:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/710473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lymricks/pseuds/lymricks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's his mama who teaches him how to shoot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Baby Steps

The first time Raylan sees someone fire a gun he is two years old. He doesn’t remember it, but Frances remembers it well enough for the both of them. _My son,_ she said once to Arlo, while her belly was still round, _is not gonna have a reason to fire a weapon._

That conversation melts into the air on a Thursday morning when her baby is two years old. She’s standing on the front porch, her back to the screen door. Just because she’s not facing him doesn’t mean she doesn’t know her son is standing there. She can see him perfectly, although her eyes are locked on the man walking up to the house. She knows exactly what Raylan looks like—his nose pressed up against the screen. He’ll have red hashmarks on his face for the rest of the day, she’s sure.

“Ma’am,” the man says, “I’m looking for Arlo Givens.”

“Best go lookin’ somewhere else,” she answers, her arms crossed in front of her chest.

“I don’t want to give you any trouble,” he says, and he’s two hundred pounds easy, and sauntering like he’s got something to be proud of.

“Well then,” Frances answers, “You can get right back in that truck of yours and head on home.”

The man lifts his rifle up, aiming at her. “You sure you want that handsome boy of yours to see this?”

Everything in her bristles. “You must not be very familiar with my family,” she says, “Else you’d know exactly who I am.”

He moves a finger to the trigger. “You’re Arlo’s—”

And Frances Givens never does find out what of Arlo’s she is, because she’s the fastest draw in Harlan, and anyone worth his salt would’ve known better than to talk to her when he could’ve been shooting his gun.

~

Raylan is five before she feels comfortable talking to him about guns. Things with Arlo are getting ugly in every sense of the word. He’s ugly at home, and brings ugly home with him from “work.” Frances feels something deep in her bones when she looks at Raylan, because she knows—like she knows when Raylan’s upset, or when Arlo’s in a mood—that she ain’t gonna be around for her boy as long as she’d like to be.

“Hey baby,” she says one day, kneeling in front of her son. “You know what your mama’s real good at, besides telling stories and making fried chicken just how you like it?”

Raylan is still so young, then, and he stares up at her and shakes his head. He’s chewing on his thumb, and she pulls it gently from his mouth and holds both his hands in hers. “Your mama,” she says softly, “Is faster n’better than any of them Crowders or Bennetts. You could ask just about anyone.”

Raylan’s little chest puffs out and he grins up at her. He’s proud of his mama. Frances’s heart is breaking, just like her body is, and she holds his hands tighter. “I’m gonna teach you to be just as good as I am, ok baby?”

Raylan nods his little head up and down, real quick, and Frances carefully does not cry.

~

She teaches him like her daddy taught her. By the time Raylan’s old enough to fire a gun, he won’t remember a time when he wasn’t intimately familiar with one. She teaches him what every part of the gun does. She teaches him to clean it. She lets him learn the different weights. She teaches him on pistols and rifles—on anything she can get her hands on. She can, it turns out, get her hands on a fairly considerable arsenal. She doesn’t let him fire a single shot until she knows he’s ready.

“All right now,” she says, standing behind him. “Stand like this, bend your knees a little—ok baby, go ahead.”

He’s too old to be called baby anymore, but Frances will never shake the name. She holds still when he fires, can’t help a bit of a smile at the shudder that runs through him. He’s gangly, yet, like his limbs aren’t quite sure what the rest of his body is supposed to be doing, but he’ll grow into them soon enough. Already she can see in his gait the long-limbed man he will grow up to be. He’s got his mama’s hair, her lucky little boy, and it will make the girls swoon.

He’s a boy now though. He’s her boy—and a little bit Arlo’s too—and smart, maybe too smart for his own good. He fights her on just about everything.

“Boyd says—”

“What his daddy taught him to say. Who’s better with a gun? Me? Or Bo?”

“You,” Raylan grumbles, and Frances smiles and nods her head.

He’s her boy, after all. She’s allowed to be proud of him.

~

There are days when she could shoot Arlo, but she doesn’t.

There’s one day she does, but he put a gun in her face and Frances loves him, she _loves him_ and she _hates him,_ but ain’t no man in this world puts a gun in her face and gets away with it.

“God damn, woman,” Arlo says to her, a hand clutching his side as she ties a bandage up around him, “Id’a got you if you weren’t so damned fast.”

“I love you too, Arlo,” she says, and ties the bandage more viciously than she really needs to.

~

She runs away and she runs back. She holds Raylan as close to her as she can, although he’s growin’ up now. He’s talking like he’s gonna work in the mines, and maybe he will, for a time. She won’t know, but she does know that her baby is gonna be bigger than Harlan, even if he doesn’t know it yet. _She_ knows it. Knows it deep down in her bones. She’s not going to be around to see it though. She’s not gonna see her baby grow all the way up.

Frances kisses Raylan on the forehead, “You remember, baby,” she says softly, “You gotta be fast like your mama.”

~

Frances Givens doesn’t get to see it—but she taught her baby well.

Frances Givens was a faster draw than any soul in Harlan. Raylan’s even faster.


End file.
